


The First Thaw of Spring

by mistresscarlett



Category: Terry Pratchett - Discworld
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:Dejana Talis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:39:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mistresscarlett/pseuds/mistresscarlett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To start with, the little figure with the scythe isn't who she's expecting at all...</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Thaw of Spring

  


  
  
  
  
  


  
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## The First Thaw of Spring

 

Fandom: [Terry Pratchett - Discworld](http://yuletidetreasure.org/get_fandom_quicksearch.cgi?Fandom=Terry%20Pratchett%20-%20Discworld)

 

Written for: Dejana Talis in the Yuletide 2008 Challenge

by [mistress_scarlett](http://yuletidetreasure.org/cgi-bin/contact.cgi?filename=66/thefirst)

To start with, the little figure with the scythe isn't who she's expecting at all.

`ESMERELDA WEATHERWAX?'

Granny Weatherwax steps up and out of the threadbare armchair, leaving her body still seated, bolt upright and staring straight ahead. It doesn't hurt anymore, and that's an improvement, she must say. It has been a cold night. She eyes the twisted limbs with an odd mixture of pity and revulsion, then turns to regard her visitor with pure suspicion. It's less complicated.

The young woman standing before the dying fire is tall, thin, rather pretty and slightly insubstantial, in a way that would be immediately apparent only to a witch. She reminds Granny a bit of that nasty Diamanda with her pale skin and tatty lace around the hemline of her long black dress, but the face is strong and sensible, and the eyes sharply intelligent. Still, there is a ridiculous amount of blue and silver glitter sticking to the young woman's bodice, and are those *sequins*?, and frankly, it just won't do.

Granny discovers, to her secret relief, that it is still perfectly possible to glare at someone without actually possessing eyes.

`Old fool didn't have the gumption to turn up in person, I see?'

The apparition turns, if possible, paler. She does not actually shuffle her sensibly-shod feet, but gives the impression that if she were a slightly different person (or a slightly younger one), she would very much like to.

`It's - um, I mean, IT'S HIS DAY OFF.'

`You mind your manners, girl. It's his day off what?'

Without the girl's notice or permission, her left hand snakes up to twine nervously in the silver-blonde hair that's escaping from its sensible plain bun.

`IT'S HIS DAY OFF, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX.'

`Typical, Death these days. Used to be he'd turn up in person for witches and wizards on their deathbeds. Or death chairs, as the case may be. Show some respect for the craft, like. Now he's flibbertigibberting about all over the Disc, a body can't even expect decent service, and after all the times he's come after me before, too. Well, I can't be having with it.'.

`SORRY, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX. He, um. HE SAID HE'S NOT FEELING WELL, SO HE SENT ME INSTEAD.'

The old witch remains silent, glaring at a particularly sparkly spot just belong the young woman's collarbone.

`I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF MARKING CLASS PROJECTS, TOO.'

The young woman looks down and notices the blue and silver on her dress. Her pale skin erupts into furious blushes.

`THEY WERE ON THE PRINCIPLE EXPORTS OF KLATCH. THERE WAS QUITE A LOT OF GLITTER.'

Granny relents and steps in closer to the girl, brushing off the glitter for her with a slightly transparent hand. `Well. There, it's alright. I'm not blaming you, young woman, you're obviously doing the best you can. But it's not right. I can't just be goin' off in any case. Huh, I'd just like to see me leavin' that Nanny Ogg in charge around here, and as for what young witches is like these days, it's a shame and a scandal. No, I think I'd best be stopping here a while. If it's all the same to you, dearie.' Wartime ultimatums have been delivered in less stentorian tones of voice.

`I'M AFRAID THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX. YOU MUST COME WITH ME.'

`I'm afraid not, dear. You're a good girl to help out your poor old granddad like this, but I'm pretty sure you ain't got the power to make me. You just tell him that he hasn't heard the last of this from me!'.

Susan closes her eyes, hefts the scythe, and gives it a hearty back-handed swing .

`But, surely - I mean, SURELY THAT IS THE POINT, MISTRESS WEATHERWAX.'

`And what d'you mean by that?'

`WE HAVE ALL, AT LONG LAST, FINALLY HEARD THE LAST OF YOU.'

* * *

When Esme opens her eyes again, it's daylight, and she is still standing in the kitchen. 'And then she woke up, and it was all a -' no, that's stupid. The old armchair is gone, the windows have been opened to let in the cold fresh air, and the cottage has an indefinable sense of being a new place, a place someone is just beginning to make their home. The late-afternoon light streaming through the windows suggests that the Disc has tilted, time has moved on. Two weeks, two and a half? Winter's nearly over. And in any case, there's no way she could have dreamed those sequins.

Still, her pots and pans are just where she'd left them, hanging on hooks around three of the four well-scrubbed plaster-daub walls. The drying herbs hanging from the oak rafters have been well aired and turned, though, and although the back door is still kept ajar for any small creature that might want or need to come in from the cold outside, there are no traces of muddy badger paw prints or shed fox fur.

Three young women are sitting, for a given value of `together', around the ricketty old kitchen table.

Magrat Garlick is no longer the gawky, skinny girl-child who had been dropped abruptly into Goody Whemper's battered shoes all those years ago. But she is tall and pale and slender still, stars on her impractical blue velvet cloak, and a slightly worried expression on her face.

`Erm. Ahem. Hail, sisters. As Witch-Queen of Lancre and temp'ry acting leader of this coven I, um, I now declare this meeting open!'

A noise that sounds very much like `Nnnnrf' issues from the other side of the table: `Witch-Queen of Lancre' has proven a bit too much for Agnes Nitt. She whips a small, pink-nailed hand up to her mouth just in time to stifle the giggles, but can't do anything about the mischevious sparkle in her bright blue eyes. She exchanges a quick look with the third and youngest member of the coven, a look which Magrat unfortunately notices.

Pulling herself up to her full height, the newly-appointed coven leader glares across the table, and, in the triumphant tone usually associated with statements such as `No further questions, m'lud', or `Because I'm your mother, that's why', issues a simple yet heartfelt command:

`Make the tea, Tiffany!'.

With just a twinge of what, in anyone else, would be considered guilt, Esme realises that Magrat has been waiting to say that for quite literally half her life.

Tiffany smiles sweetly. She raises her left hand a few inches above the table surface, and performs a small yet intricate summoning gesture with the first three fingers of her left hand. This utterly fails to miraculously conjure a cup of tea from the firmament in a stunning display of raw magical power. But it does do the rather more interesting trick of drawing Magrat's attention to the cup of tea that has been steaming gently away at her elbow for the last ten minutes.

`It's chamomile and comfrey, half a teaspoonful of honey, just the way you like it. Agnes, yours is the Lord Snapcase with milk and two sugars.'

Amid the appreciative sipping noises that follow, Esme realises who has inherited her cottage.

* * *

Sighing a little, unseen by the young witches (Agnes and Magrat have now launched into an all-out argument about the witchcraft outreach programme Magrat wants to run for young female trolls and dwarfs in the community, while Tiffany is discreetly ignoring them and getting the biscuits into the oven), she slips outside and stands on the doorstep, watching the blazing winter sunset kindle the valley with tongues of cold fire.

`They'll be alright, you know.'

She turns and sees a terrible danger and a menace such as has not plagued Lancre these past fifty years. The ghastly monster prowling up the mountain path towards her possesses deep brown eyes, a torrent of long, curly dark hair, a smile like a hurricane lamp and the body immortalised in oils by the genius Leonard da Quirm shortly before he went... a little bit peculiar.

She leans on the sagging fence post of Granny's - Tiffany's - cottage, and turns the full force of her smile on the old woman. `You shouldn't worry yourself, Esme. We picked them pretty good in the end.'

`Gytha, you were a daft little fool back when you really looked like that, and you're a worse one now. They're going to kill each other. Listen to them in there - ' the clatter of a falling plate punctuates her speech - `fighting like ten cats in a sack, the stupid little baggages.'

`Seems to me,' - the grin, if anything, gets broader - `we used to fight like at least eleven, Esme.'

`No we didn't.'

`Yes we did.'

`No we didn't.'

`Yes we - '

`Oh, what would you know about it, Gytha Ogg. You ain't even - ' her eyes widen as she realises - `you ain't dead yet. Are you.' It isn't a question.

There is a flicker of something close to sadness in the pretty girl's dark eyes. `You're right there, Esme. It's not going to be much fun without you around, but someone's got to keep an eye on those girls for a bit longer. In a strictly supervis'ry capacity, like. And it would be a pity' she smiles again `if young Tiff didn't have someone to help her out with all that extra cheese she keeps turning out, after all.'

`Well, what are you doing here then? And why are you -` Esme searches for the correct word, and realises there isn't one - `dressed like that, anyway?'

The girl winks at her brazenly. `Someone's got to give you a good kick in the britches to move you on, don't they? And I'm good with ghosts, me. You've got to go, Esme, we're not having you hanging around disapproving of us all for ever an' ever. We got enough of that while you was alive'.

Esmerelda narrows her eyes. `You take that back, you horrible little baggage!'

`Make me, you daft old bat!'.

Gytha jumps back, sniggering, and Esmerelda lunges after her. She chases the girl down the mountain path, and despite the fact that the teen-aged Gytha is even more annoying than she remembered, for some reason neither of them can stop laughing. Things get a bit strange, after that point, even by Lancre witch standards. The hair that tumbles out of the hard knot at the base of her skull is thick and heavy, not white any longer but the colour of sun on wheat. The Disc is shifting; it isn't sunset any more but morning, and she doesn't know how she could ever have confused the two. The forest is brighter and clearer, the grass is softer under her bare feet and they're no longer chasing but racing now, down the slope, slipping and tumbling away from the broken-down cottage and into the sunlit fields. She runs on ahead, she always ran faster, but she knows that sooner or later her friend will catch up.

Somewhere up the mountain, she can smell the first thaw of spring.

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